


War Paint

by SpacePancake



Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, fluff then angst then fluff, im sorry for hurting them, probably ooc bc idk things, the boys bond, willy is a DIIIIIICK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 11:21:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpacePancake/pseuds/SpacePancake
Summary: While being held captive by the Omega Daddies, the sons bond over something the Oak twins have been hiding. Willy doesn’t approve.
Relationships: dndads sons, lark & sparrow, terry jr & grant, terry jr & sparrow
Comments: 20
Kudos: 122





	War Paint

**Author's Note:**

> I take some liberties with the character ages. Though they obviously can’t be TOO far apart in age, I imagine Grant and Terry Jr to be a lot older than the twins and Nick is somewhere in the middle. The twins are 10!
> 
> tw: Willy is a piece of shit.  
> — use of ‘fairy’ and ‘gay’ as insults. Implications that feminine things aren’t something that men should do.  
> — violence against children (hair tugged, a slap)
> 
> — blood is mentioned when someone is stabbed. It isn’t described too heavily.

The twins had been quiet for the last five minutes. A suspicious amount of silence for the pair. Perhaps ‘quiet’ wasn’t the right word, because they were definitely making  _ some  _ noise. A hushed whispering shared rapidly between the two as they sat huddled in the corner.

Terry Jr found it concerning to say the least. Either they were planning to attack one of them or they were planning to attack one of their grandparents. While the first option was one of the last things he wanted, the latter was even more concerning. Lark, especially, did not know when to stop and Terry was anxious of what his own grandfather would do to get him to behave.

He didn’t like thinking about it but  _ obviously  _ he was feeling weird about his first time meeting Willy. It was so easy to hate Ron, he was the _worst_ , but coming face to face with his father and the potential path to what he could’ve been… perhaps Terry was ever-so-slightly more grateful to have that idiot for a step-father than he was before. 

Terry wished he didn’t have to be the one to reign in the Oak twins when they got too rowdy, but there was no one else for the job. Nick was younger than he was and hardly cared about what the boys were doing anyway. Currently he was dozing off, somehow still managing to look 10 times cooler asleep than Terry did awake. Grant would’ve been the obvious choice. He was the oldest of them and definitely would’ve been Terry’s choice for team leader before this whole mess happened. Whatever had happened to him though, before he had been the last of them to arrive in the castle all pale and jumpy and unable to speak more than three words at a time, it had changed him. 

Terry didn’t have the time to psychoanalysis Grant with the twins scheming, but whatever was going on with him certainly crossed him off the list for the potential pseudo-adults of the group. Which just left Terry. 

_ Fuck. _

He kept his eyes on the twins a moment longer, but couldn’t get much information out of simple observation. They’d scrunched up real close together in the corner of the cell, their backs shielding them and their likely-nefarious conversations.

He decided getting the attention of the self-declared ‘love wolf’ was the safest option (using ‘safest’ very lightly). “Sparrow.”

The two boys looked back around at the same time. They both smiled — Sparrow’s cute, Lark’s devilish. 

“What are you doing?”

The twins looked to each other, seemingly communicating something telepathically, before they looked back to Terry and held up a hand each.

They were covered, wrist to fingertip, in colour. Red swirls and blue dots and green stripes and yellow waves left no patches of skin to be seen bar the creases between fingers.

All Terry managed to get out was a simple “Huh?”

“It’s war paint!” Lark chirped.

Sparrow nodded. “The people of Neverwinter thought we would appreciate it.”

“You’ve just had paint with you this entire time?” Terry asked, having not seen even a hint of such before now.

Sparrow shrugged. “We have lots of stuff. War paint, gold, potions…”

“Knives.” Lark added.

Sparrow nodded again. “Knives.” He agreed. “I gave all my bladed possessions to my dear brother as part of my quest to help the world through love and becoming a cool wolf.”

“Right.” Terry said. The twins’ weird way of talking hardly registered as strange anymore. He supposed living with Ron helped with that.

“Hey, little dudes.” Nick piped in. Terry hadn’t noticed him waking up. Maybe he had been awake the whole time? “You got any black paint?”

The two boys rushed towards Nick and started excitedly rattling off about the kinds of paint they had and what they could do with it.

Terry smiled and leaned back against the cell wall, the icy coldness of the stone not feeling quite as invasive as it had before. His thoughts drifted for a little while, zoning out into a peaceful nothingness but not quite reaching sleep.

A sudden impact to his legs quickly pushed him into a state of pure panic. Were the Grand Daddies here? Were they angry? Were the others okay?

His eyes snapped open and landed on a grinning Sparrow perched on his lap. Terry had to take a minute to slow down his breathing again.

“Are you… okay?” Terry asked.

“What colour do you want?” Sparrow asked in return.

Terry, still a little zoned out, looked across the room at Nick. Very basic swipes of red paint laid underneath his eyes like he was attending some sort of football game, but his hands were covered in swirling red flames. His fingerless gloves had been laid aside and Lark held his right hand in his own, tongue stuck out between his teeth as he concentrated on continuing the pattern. Nick nodded at Terry and offered him a lazy gesture of hand-horns with his free hand.

Terry nodded back before looking to Sparrow. “You can choose.”

Sparrow reached for the small palettes he had scattered around him and brought up one that was bright pink. Surprising colour for war paint.

It felt just like face paint, so it wasn’t any sort of alien feeling. Still, someone smushing cold fingers across his face wasn’t a feeling he’d call  _ familiar _ either. Sparrow had the same face of concentration as his brother — tongue stuck out between his teeth. Terry closed his eyes again and let the young artist do as he pleased.

It didn’t take long for Sparrow to complete his work all across his face and over both hands. “Finished! What do you think?”

Terry looked down at his hands to find ‘love’ written on one and ‘power’ written on the other. He chuckled. “I… like it. I think. I don’t really have a mirror though.”

Sparrow frowned for a moment, humming as he thought. Very suddenly he brightened up again and looked over his shoulder to yell “Knife!”

Terry felt his soul leave his body as Lark casually reached into his pocket, pulled out a knife, and tossed it across the room. The role of pseudo-responsible adult robbed him of his breath in the moment and if Grant hadn’t vouched for Henry Oak being alive just recently, Terry would’ve sworn his spirit had temporarily possessed him watching the twins.

Grant seemed more alert than ever, wide-eyed and gripping his arms tight.

Sparrow effortlessly caught the handle of the knife, punctuated by a simple “sick” from Nick. Taking no time to reflect on the dangerous feat he had just performed, Sparrow held the knife under Terry’s face and gestured for him to look down. The twins had seemingly polished the knife since its reflection was akin almost to a mirror. 

Terry allowed an easy smile to creep across his face as he looked at the sight of himself with crudely drawn pink hearts scattered across his cheeks — dots and smudges of the other colours Sparrow had on his fingers edging their ways in in places.

“Cool.” Terry said, and that seemed to be enough for Sparrow, who jumped off his lap and bounced over to Grant.

Grant didn’t seem to react much to Sparrow’s painting offers but Terry caught the ghost of a smile on his face when Sparrow mentioned painting a rainbow around his wrist.

“What’s going on here?”

Grant’s head snapped up, the twins spun around and Nick coolly raised his head. Terry followed after them with a slow turn of his head to look at the imposing figure of Willy Stampler. Further from being verbally addressed as ‘granddad’ than Ron had  _ ever  _ been from ‘dad’.

“Get up.”

All of them were frozen in place.

He banged his closed fist against the opaque blue wall behind him, sending out a thunderous boom that echoed across the cell. “Get the fuck up.”

The twins sprung to their feet, Grant and Terry were close enough behind them. Nick stayed sitting.

As soon as Willy took a step towards Nick, Terry was in his way. “Sir, please. No one was misbehaving.”

“Respect your elders.” His dad after he got in trouble for talking back to an older teacher. “Be nice to Ron.” His mom said even when he told her how much he didn’t like him. 

‘sirs’ and ‘ma’am’s and ‘please’s and ‘don’t talk back to old people’ wasn’t actually about  _ respecting  _ them. It was because old people opperated in a world where they wanted younger people to smile and nod at whatever they said, no matter how fucking stupid. The world was run by old people, and sometimes the old person in the room was the one with all the power. It was easier to win the game sometimes when you played by their rules, Willy was no exception. Arguing and standing up to him without  _ at least  _ any of the dads to back them up was just going to get them hurt. They needed to play it safe to stay safe.

None of the others understood that.

“I told you to get to your feet.” Willy said, before looking towards Nick with a withered look. “If this lazeabout can’t follow a simple instruction then-“

Lark let out a mighty war cry and suddenly there was a dagger in Willy’s left hand. Terry hadn’t even seen him come over. 

Looking unamused, Willy casually lifted the hand and removed the dagger, before throwing it to the ground where it clattered across the room. It landed near Grant’s feet. 

Willy grabbed Lark by his thick mass of hair, drawing him close to his face. His hand was still bleeding despite his lack of reaction to the injury, streaking bright crimson across the kid’s dirty blond hair. “That was a mistake.”

He didn’t get more words in before Sparrow bit his wrist. Willy didn’t cry out like any normal human would react but he released Lark in order to shake the boy off him. Sparrow’s death grip was pretty tight but a few violent shakes managed to send him flying into his brother.

“Jesus fucking christ,” Terry couldn’t stop himself from saying, “They’re  _ ten.” _

Willy spun around to face him. From the corner of his eyes, Terry noticed Nick had moved forward to pull the twins back — a difficult enough feat in the case of Lark.

Willy didn’t have a very angry expression on his face, it was more like he had just caught sight of the settled fly that had been buzzing around the room for the last fifteen minutes. 

“Do you want to try that again?”

All the ‘sir’s and ‘please’s escaped him. “Fuck you.”

The hand came too quickly at him to dodge. It slapped him across the face with enough force to send him stumbling backwards a step or two. 

Terry brought his hand slowly up to his stinging cheek, touching it lightly and barely able to process what had just happened. He hadn’t expected to be slapped. A dark magic curse or a sword through the stomach or some other unreal fantasy  _ bullshit,  _ sure. But a little mundane slap? No authority figure had ever  _ slapped _ him before.

Terry was forced to look at him again when Willy twisted his shirt collar in his hand and dragged him forward, everything tight enough around his neck that he felt halfway to choking.

“I know you weren’t raised well, so let me set the record straight here. I won’t tolerate any backtalk like that. You're in my house now, you  _ respect  _ me. Got it?”

Terry couldn’t respond.

“ _ Got it?”  _ The shirt tightened around Terry’s neck.

“Got- got it.” Terry managed.

“I’ll have none of that prissy fairy shit sprawled all across your face either. You’re young  _ men,  _ fucking act like it.”

A dagger flew across the room and dug into Willy’s neck.

Terry was released and both he and Willy looked across the room to see Grant, arm outstretched.

Terry looked back to Willy, but any hints of anger had faded from his face. Blood rushed down his neck and stained his cloak. It didn’t stop bleeding. He removed the dagger and let it drop. Terry heard it hit the floor but didn’t dare look. 

Willy swirled his hand and a brush appeared in it. It looked as if it had been taken from the bottom of a decade-old broom, dirty and made up of rough bristles. He let it drop as well, and it landed with a splash as it hit the water of a bucket that hadn’t been there before.

“You boys are going to rub that gay shit off your face before I come back or you’ll be held in separate rooms from now on.”

He disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Then Grant spoke up. “So do you think he’s homophobic then?”

Despite everything that had just happened, Terry laughed. He laughed hard. Then all of them bar Grant himself were laughing.

“What a prick.” Terry said.

“Total asshole.” Nick agreed. 

Terry looked over at the twins, where Nick was still holding them. “You two okay?”

Sparrow nodded and Lark grinned. “I stabbed him!”

“That  _ was _ pretty rad, little dude.” Nick said.

“Next time I’ll  _ beat  _ him.” Lark added.

Terry walked over and sat beside the more violent twin. “I think it would be better if we kept this as a stealth mission.”

Lark pulled a face. “Stealth mission?”

“Well, Willy’s more of a ‘final boss’ kind of enemy. We need to fight  _ smart,  _ right? We should wait until our dads get here at least. The more power, the better, right?”

Lark hummed before he nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, yes. More power. Sounds delightful.”

“That’s  _ if _ they make it here.” Nick said. Terry shot him a look to which he just shrugged. “Shit. Sorry, man.”

“Will they?” Sparrow asked, looking up at Terry with an expression akin to a puppy dog.

“Yeah.” Terry replied. Grant ‘tch’d, but Terry continued. “They’re going to break us out of here in some stupid way and then we can paint again.”

Terry looked around for the paint palettes on the floor to put them away, but found no trace of them. Must’ve disappeared when Willy did. “Guess we can get some more later.”

“No need to fear!” Sparrow said, reaching down his shirt and pulling out a palette of blue paint. “We have plenty more!”

The twins looked to each other and high fived. “Stealth!”

It was a little while later that Terry was cleaning the paint from Lark’s hands, an already clean Sparrow draped over his shoulders as he worked. He had tried to use the brush at first but elected for ripping a strip of fabric from his shirt and using that instead.

Lark was as fidgety as always, but was excited enough about the stealth mission that cleaning his hands didn’t take long. As soon as Terry deemed them clean enough, Lark snatched the cloth from his hands and the twins bounced over to Nick to attack him with water after Terry refused their help for himself.

He took another strip of fabric from his shirt and quickly cleaned his hands. He looked into the reflection of a knife that Lark had given him to clean his own face, but the distortion of the image made it a little hard to do.

He didn’t notice Grant was beside him until he spoke up. “Do you, uh— do you want some… help?”

Terry took another look at the knife and sighed before passing Grant the cloth. “Yeah, thanks.”

Grant sat down and scrubbed at his face in silence for a minute or two.

“Are you okay?” Terry asked.

“You’re the one that got hit.” Grant shot back, pausing his work. “Are  _ you  _ okay?”

Terry didn’t respond for a moment, then caught Grant’s eyes in his. 

“We will be.”


End file.
